Freeze Frame

Freeze Frame is the best example of a filmic signifier stripped of transparency and invisibility. Footage is repeatedly re-filmed – workers at a construction site, an incinerating plant, industrial graveyards, an antenna-like object resembling an illegible and continually collapsing cipher. Elaborate multiple exposures render an unambiguous reading of the images impossible, let alone their integration into a fictional space. This calculated removal of the image drives Tscherkassky to a point of no return – the film-strip stops or ‘freezes’ at the projector gate (hence the title), and burns up. (Michael Palm)